This is a very considered and thoughtful report. I haven't had a chance to read or inwardly digest the entire thing yet, but I have looked at the resolutions and explanations. A few thoughts come to mind.

The resolution to seat members of other areas of the Communion on TEC deliberative bodies, is interesting. This may be a good thing, as it will allow others to see us working firsthand. I think the more provinces or Communion-folk who see how we work to spread the Good News is great, because I believe firmly that we in TEC have alot to offer other people in the Communion. Also, we might get viewpoints that we might never have thought about before. This is a very courageous proposal.

The resolution for an "Anglican Covenant" is not so interesting. I wouldn't want us to be another Church that has another confessional statement. We already have the Creeds and the 39 Articles. The Communion is not a Church in need of a "Covenant." We have bonds of affection. We are a family in Christ.

The Covenant would be like a family prenup. I know some Christian bodies insist on these sort of things but I would certainly vote no on this one.

Since nowhere in the Report does it state the we are going to stop welcoming or consecrating lesbigay clergy, there are some who will find nothing worthwhile in this Report.

Indeed, these individuals will find nothing useful unless The Episcopal Church states that lesbians and gays are to never have a relationship with another person. If lesbians and gays refuse this, they want them to shut up and/or let themselves be discriminated against.

This is all that those opposed to The Episcopal Church really want--that if someone is gay or lesbian, they have to lead a life alone, without loving intimacy. And by God if they do have a loving intimacy, they can't say one word about what they are doing.

I'm still digesting the report with its recommendations, too.

My initial reaction is that this effort is probably best viewed as inhabiting that alternate narrative which many have read - and probably will continue to read - from the various Lambeth resolutions, combined with other sources. That is, as a step into, a step towards - an Anglican listening process that needs to continue for some good time, worldwide.

To that extent, this document recommends and presumes just the sort of thing that is supposed to be unnecessary and even heretical, according to conservative realigment camps who are inside and outside of the Anglican Communion as such. (Want a hint of that agenda? Google Christian Reconstructionism and see what comes up. It is a whole world of narrative forming a whole range of different, yet similar, communities.)

The recommendations don't read much like ECUSA moving into new conservative conformity with all due speed.

Just the opposite, in fact, to the extent that doors to Anglican process are wide open.

I do appreciate how clearly it sidesteps the competing realignment narrative which some interpreted to singularly invite the churches in USA or Canada to demean, repudiate, or get nasty again about their LGBTQ believers. That is a graceful witness, even to other Anglicans worldwide who cannot now hear it.

The real dilemmas will involve whether we actually get such a worldwide Anglican process, on two fronts instead of just one.

Sexuality changes simply will not die down or go away, because the New Biology is going to startle all of us with new knowledge of human nature that has core impact on how we understand human behavior, sexuality included. Fasten your seat belts on that knowledge horizon, then. We who were paying attention in college classes began to get hints that an ancient near eastern approach (or a modern near eastern approach, for that matter) was not going to be sustainable. Women are people, too, for one big thing.

So we are hardly done with listening to new understandings of human nature or of human sexuality.

The second listening process connected with the new possibilities of some sort of worldwide Anglican Covenant is also vexed and complicated, so far as I can tell.

From a conservative realigment frame, any worldwide covenant that falls short of utter Conformity will be unacceptable. And, given how diverse Anglican believers' many views around the world actually are, I cannot see such a Great Conformity being stated in writing, without also needing several forceful mechanisms of enforcement and punishment. For one thing, the Great Conformity urged upon us by the several conservative realignment entities roots itself to a large extent in an exclusively penal model of salvation. So why shouldn't our new covenant be at least a means of judging and punishing one another for exploring, inquiring, talking, or musing out loud?

The innate new Anglican paradox may be that we have complete intellectual freedom to know, to inquire, to understand - just so long as we do not ever really use it. Then we must be put out of the communion, if we happen to fail to be sufficiently Conformed in its conservatively realigned covenant.

Why keep urging the historically doomed agenda of trying to find a substitute for modern biology or psychology in our scriptures, as we once thought we could find a substitute for an empirical cosmology? We have been through all that before when the solar system was first discovered, against all Status Quo readings of scripture that dominated in that era. Will we believers ever finish learning this lesson?

I doubt that very many worldwide Anglican believers really wish to be that Conformed, with suitable punishments gleefully attached. I rather doubt that ABC Rowan Williams wishes to be a focus of unity for that sort of worldwide church, prizing itself on its ignorance. But who knows for certain?

At least if we have two big listening processes going on worldwide, we can find out just how conformed and ignorant we really want to be, or need to be, as Anglicans. That would at least serve the ends of getting clear with one another, instead of just mushing along.

The best that I suspect we might seek in such a covenant-connected listening process is to just get the nasty Great Conformity right out into the open, under all the glaring lights of discussion, investigation, and of course, the world media watching from our various cultural sidelines.

Nothing disinfects totalitarian movements quite as well as ethical investigation, plural communities of discussion, and the real hearts and minds and bodies and spirits of real people, all around our planet.

If we can use both listening processes to surface and understand our many Anglican differences - then we just might get somewhere, both new and renewed, in deep senses of God being at work among us in our very diversities in ways which the conservative realignment camps simply cannot avow.

I look for those camps to start barfing all over the document with its recommendations, then. Just as soon as they have consulted adequately with their funders and handlers about how best to play it, fitted with the a priori larger campaign strategy.

Expect the whole reality of repentance to be attacked. If a believer is not willing to get nasty about the queers, then probably that believer is a heretic or pagan, no?

Expect the vague language suggested in favor of moratoria on gay bishops or public rites of gay family blessings to be vigorously attacked in no uncertain terms. Getting nasty about both gay bishops and gay families is a core matter, after all, which serves to define the issues by the fear or disgust embodied in just those narratives.

Once you stop repeating all the nasties, one starts to wonder what all the fuss is about as one sees and understands that we are all simply more human than anything else. The surface analogies between sexual orientation differences and every other terrible, negative human thing in worldwide cultures begins to dissolve and fade into our backgrounds. If you have little fear or disgust, then why should you seek to punish, dominate, and control other people? If your stunning blessed witness of the sheer holiness of being nothing but straight for God doesn't convince, what else will? Prison? Flogging? Torture? Beheading? Homelessness? Unemployment?

The strategtic problem from a realignment point of view is that aside from the typical attacks, a range of rhetorical genres which we have already exhaustively sampled; there is not much more to get ahold of. Expect the realigment camps to flood believers with pamphlets or other media, rehearsing every fearful or disgusting detail they can think of in life with LGBTQ folks as main examples of this or that depravity.

Yes, anal sex will once again appear, probably in vivid if not pornographic detail. Yes, men in dresses will probably once more be mentioned. Why do conservative straight folks never seem to get clear about the differences among: (1)sexual orientation? and (2) gender core identity? and (3) gender social roles?

Even the oft-quoted Lambeth 1998 1.10 resolution - as well as the Windsor Report, as well as ABC Rowan Williams' remarks - have told us that getting nasty about LGBTQ folks is hardly the point. But to conservative realignment communities, what other point is there?

If ECUSA has to be maligned for something, let it be that we took a stand for universal human rights for all LGBTQ citizens of our planet, as part of committing ourselves to the two Anglican listening processes.

As an individual believer, I am quite willing to be pushed by groups like Forward In Faith, British Reform, and lots of others - in connection with the modern understandings of human nature or sexuality; so long as those groups cannot avoid being pushed themselves, on the basic human rights of all LGBTQ people.

Even if the conservative realignment of the worldwide communion is successful to a great extent, we cannot anticipate that the campaign will cease. Then we will see them really go after basic human rights for both queers, and for all alternative thinking people. Build more prisons, right away, for all the sex criminals and all the thought criminals that the Great Conformity will need to define and punish.

Yahweh is one, then, and George Orwell is his prophet?

Spin it all you want, ye who value having tea at Canterbury more than the truth.

It is unique in that it manages to be a betrayal to both sides in a debate with only one right answer. It reflects a lack of real conviction,resolve or theological integrity on the part of the Bishops, who just three years ago, voted for the consecration of Robinson.

Oasis Claifornia has issued a news release titled "ECUSA Special Commission Report No Bar To Electing Best Candidate As California Bishop" - it is found in their news blog @ http://www.oasiscalifornia.org/news/2006/04/ecusa-special-commission-report-no-bar.html